Summary
Contents
Advances in health care have made extraordinary changes in the life expectancy and level of vitality of the average American. Still, according to the U. S. Surgeon General, a full one-half of all premature deaths are due to lifestyle and, therefore, preventable. This important collection presents a comparative synthesis of what works and what does not in mass media health campaigns. High priority is given to coverage of substance abuse prevention campaigns, but programs on AIDS, smoking, teenage pregnancy, heart disease, Alzheimer's Disease, and vehicle seat belt use are also reviewed. Designing Health Communication Campaigns deepens our understanding of how to design, implement, and evaluate mass media campaigns by highlighting the contributions of media experts who add a human element to the various campaign experiences they describe. This work is indispensable in a fast-evolving field where it serves as both a reference and a concordance for interpreting many other analytic sources. Campaign designers, researchers, communications scholars and graduate students as well as policymakers and program funders will find the book to be valuable in helping make critical decisions about effective mass communication campaigns. “This volume is valuable because it emphasizes actual experiences, and is thus recommended as an adjunct to classic texts in the field. Graduate; faculty; professional.” – Choice
Overview
The great American actress Helen Hayes once said, “It's what you learn after you know it all that really counts.” Designers of health communication campaigns often have considerable expertise about the particular areas of health behavior that they are attempting to change, and about specific media techniques such as television or radio public service announcements (PSAs). But campaign designers and researchers seldom examine what works and what does not in campaigns on health topics other than their primary interests, and they often have only incomplete understanding of how the industries that produce and distribute media products (film, television, and so on) operate. The impacts of their campaigns inevitably suffer as a result, no matter how well designed they otherwise may be.
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